Carrier route record

DLSFO→MSP

Delta Air Lines · San Francisco to Minneapolis

Flights: 1,445
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 75%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SFO to MSP lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,445 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SFO to MSP record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,428 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.97%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.5%

Every carrier on SFO to MSP, 1,919 flights

These figures cover 1,445 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on SFO to MSP

Delta flew 1,445 of the 1,919 flights on SFO to MSP, most of the route. Its 83.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.3% to SkyWest at 77.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,445	83.3%	64 min	0.97%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	301	81.0%	52 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	173	77.8%	64 min	0.00%	B+

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on SFO to MSP

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am364 flights94.2%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm359 flights72.0%
2pm–5pm359 flights78.9%
5pm–8pm81 flights81.2%
8pm–5am282 flights90.0%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 72.0% on time against 94.2% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SFO to MSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, June worst

June is the worst month at 56.5% on time, 41 points below October, the best at 97.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 139 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.6%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
0%

56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 15,103 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 1,589 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.1% on time across 1,445 flights, 13 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 13 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,445 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on SFO to MSP

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 97.1% on time and June 56.5%, a swing of 41 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,428 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures